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The week after AWP is always the worst, not only because you leave your friends and the Bookfair and the readings and general good cheer, but because -- when you are me -- you return to all of the things you neglected to do BEFORE you left, and a long list of items to complete NOW THAT YOU ARE BACK.
And this year, because the conference took place during National Poetry Month and the month that our Creative Writing Festival takes place at SCCC, it's such a weird mix of annoying, world-of-academia bullshit and then also super-lovely celebration-and-good-things.
Yesterday, in the early morning before my own children were even attending their own classes, A.P. and I met with local high school students. We read them poems, some of our own and some of others (Kinnell, Berryman, Sanabria, McDaniel), and then answered their questions. They were sweet and attentive and gracious and it was the best way to start a day. I wasn't expecting that experience -- I don't know what I was …

Sarah Kain Gutowski is a Professor of English at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island, where she lives with her husband, three children, and large, goofy dog. She is the author of Fabulous Beast (forthcoming, Texas Review Press, 2019) and Fabulous Beast: The Sow (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Her poetry has been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Verse Daily, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Epiphany, The Threepenny Review, and So to Speak: A Feminist Journal.